The history of service of African-American servicewomen,
who served in Vietnam, is reflected in the Women’s Memorial Foundation
Register and archive.The stories and memories
included in this paper illustrate the experiences of a few of the many
African-American servicewomen who volunteered for assignment to Vietnam,
as well as their reasons for volunteering and the methods they used to
overcome the gender and race-driven difficulties they encountered.

In
March 1971, a reporter for The Baltimore Sun interviewed COL (Dr.) Clotilde
Bowen, US Army Medical Corps, about her experiences in Vietnam. “What
is it like to be black and female in the mostly white, male U.S. Army?” he
asked. “Rough, often,” she replied. “Many assume you
are weak and inferior, not very capable. At best, you are patronized. At
worst, there is just outright discrimination. But it’s not so much
because you are black, but because you are a woman. The Army is learning,
often painfully, how to accept blacks as people. But it is still uptight
about women.”1

African-American
women who volunteered for military service during the war in Vietnam served
under racial and gender related policies established during the early years
of the Cold War. These policies were put into place to alleviate military
manpower shortages by encouraging women and minorities to enlist and make
careers in the service. Unfortunately, these policies were less than successful.
Personnel shortages continued to plague the armed forces throughout the
Cold War, and neither women nor minorities rushed to volunteer.2

Although
the US Armed Forces finally realized its goal of guaranteeing equal treatment
and opportunity to all persons regardless of race by the end of the Korean
War, opportunities for African-Americans to rise to leadership positions
were minimal, causing many to leave the service after one or two terms
of enlistment.3 Meanwhile,
misguided regulations pertaining to gender strictly circumscribed servicewomen’s
job assignments and promotions, so that many of the most talented and ambitious
opted for careers in the civilian sector.4 These
restrictive policies remained in place through the 1950s, 1960s and early
1970s, and exacerbated recruitment and retention problems for the armed
forces during the war in Vietnam. Male draftees and volunteers questioned
the military’s commitment to equal opportunity and wondered if the
proportion of minority soldiers in infantry units in Vietnam was too high.5 At
the same time, servicewomen, both black and white, were often denied the
opportunity to serve in Vietnam, and the relatively few women who were
assigned there were relegated to traditionally feminine jobs to keep them
safe.6 Regardless of these
constraints, however, some exceptionally brave and determined African-American
servicewomen succeeded in gaining assignments to the battle theater.

Early Integration EffortsThe
early Cold War policies that stymied servicewomen’s military careers
were institutionalized in 1947 and 1948 with the passage of the Army Navy
Nurse Act and the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act.7 The
first piece of legislation gave military nurses permanent commissioned
status equal to that of male officers in the regular and reserve components
of the Army and Navy, while at the same time imposing strict limits on
the length of nurses’ careers and their promotion potentials.8 The
1948 Integration Act established a permanent place for non-nursing women
in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force–both regulars and reserves.
The Coast Guard was not included in this act because during peacetime it
was part of the Department of Transportation rather than the Department
of Defense.

In
an attempt to facilitate the management of women, the 1948 Act constricted
servicewomen’s assignments and careers. It placed a 2 percent ceiling
on the number of women in each service, prohibited women from serving in
combat or commanding men, limited the scope and variety of their assignments
and narrowed their promotion opportunities.9 The
legislation also set age limits that forced women to retire earlier than
men so that they would not be in uniform during menopause. Finally, if
a servicewoman became pregnant or married a man with children, she was
immediately discharged.10 These
restrictions were still in place by the time of the Vietnam War. The essential
spirit of the US Armed Forces remained wholly masculine during that war.

One
month after signing the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, President
Truman took a third step meant to encourage recruitment when he issued
Executive Order 9981, mandating an end to racial discrimination and segregation
in the US Armed Forces. Of course this order did not immediately end all
racially discriminatory practices in the military. Initially, some military
leaders, such as Army Chief of Staff GEN Omar Bradley and Army Secretary
Kenneth Royal, were reluctant to implement the President's order. Less
than total support at the top of the chain of command made it easy for
some commanders to drag their heels for as long as possible.11

The
Truman administration formed an executive committee headed by former US
Solicitor General Charles O. Fahy to prepare and submit a plan for desegregating
the services. Almost two years elapsed before the committee submitted its
final report. Fahy believed that the purpose of the committee was not to
impose racial integration on the services, but to convince them of the
merits of the President's order and to agree with them on a plan to make
it effective.12 The committee
members used the concept of military efficiency to demonstrate to the services
that racial integration was a desirable goal. They contended that the increasing
technical complexity of war had created an increased demand for skilled
manpower, and the country could ill-afford to train or use any of its soldiers
below their full capacity. With logic understandable to the President and
public alike, the committee stated that since maximum military efficiency
demanded that all servicemen be given an equal opportunity to discover
and utilize their talents, an indivisible link existed between military
efficiency and equal opportunity.13 Equal
opportunity in the name of military efficiency became one of the committee's
basic premises; until the end of the committee’s existence it hammered
away at this concept.14

Integration Realities
Racial
integration took place unevenly, with each service setting its own pace. Because
women comprised such a small percentage of the force, the number of training
facilities, bases and posts to which they were assigned was also small, and
the majority of these were integrated quickly and without fanfare. The first
two black women Marines entered basic training in 1949, while the Navy integrated
its 25 black enlisted women and two black women officers in 1950.15 The
Army and Air Force also integrated basic and advanced training classes for
women quickly, the Air Force in 1949 and the Army in 1950.16 The
integration of women’s barracks and quarters sometimes took longer. For
example, an Army nurse who served in Korea during the war remembered that quarters
were integrated while she was there.17 The
Women’s Army Corps (WAC) and the Army Nurse barracks at the 98th General
Hospital in Germany were integrated in 1951, however, it was 1953 before the
nurses’ quarters at the Army’s Percy Jones General Hospital in
Battle Creek, MI, were integrated.18 According to historians within
six years of the issuance of Executive Order 9981, “the tradition of
racial segregation had collapsed throughout the armed forces.”19

Above:
New USAF Privates (left to right) Geraldean Moore, Bettyjean
Kinniebrue, Eleanor Jackson and Corinne Gogue-Cook are issued their
service uniforms for basic and extended training, Lackland AFB,
TX, February 1949. US Air Force Photo

Throughout
the 1950s and 1960s, the military services assigned non-nursing servicewomen,
both black and white, to detail-oriented desk jobs that involved typing,
filing and high-speed communications.20 During
that era, it was widely believed that women were particularly suited for
such assignments because they had more patience than men.21 This
pervasive belief was not new, during both World War I and World War II
(WWII), for example, proponents of women in uniform insisted that women
could handle boring, repetitive tasks such as switchboard work and transcription
better than men because they had more natural patience and would not become
careless out of boredom and frustration.22 At
the same time, many of the nontraditional jobs that servicewomen had performed
during the WWII manpower emergency were no longer open to them. The usual
explanation was that because of the small number of women in each service,
it was more efficient to train them for a limited number of jobs.23

Challenging the Status QuoThe
1960s were a time of dramatic and intensely public social ferment in the
United States. Challenging authority–the authority of parents, the
courts, the government, social traditions and history–was seen as
healthy. For example, many people did not believe that the United States
should be involved in the war in Vietnam and objected strongly to the military
draft, which had been in place since 1948. Anti-war demonstrations were
seen frequently on television, as were grim scenes of devastated villages,
mutilated Vietnamese women and children, and increasing American casualty
counts. Draft calls soared from 100,000 in 1964 to 400,000 in 1966, and
many of those called had little enthusiasm for a tour of duty in Vietnam.
Some chose to resist the draft, others chose to challenge the political
institutions that supported the draft. Some resistance became violent and
the reputation of the military suffered.24

Although
the US Armed Forces claimed to be integrated, African-Americans wondered
why black servicemen, both those who had volunteered to serve in the military
and those who were drafted into the service, were promoted to higher ranks
infrequently and why so many appeared to be serving in infantry units in
Vietnam.25 In reality, although
the enlisted ranks of the services were integrated by the 1960s, the military
did not yet provide equal opportunity for promotion to its black officers,
leading to legitimate concern on the part of African-American soldiers
and commentators.26 Unfortunately,
the military services, increasingly sensitive to what appeared to be criticism
from all sides, clamped down on uniformed personnel and treated every soldier
with a complaint or question, legitimate or not, as a disciplinary problem.27

In
the civilian sector, African-Americans began demanding equal treatment
at the ballot box, in the courtroom and in the classroom. They challenged
all forms of segregation, in housing, transportation, restaurants, restrooms
and colleges. Black women played a pivotal role in the battle for civil
rights at the local level from the 1950s forward, and when white college
students joined blacks in the movement in the 1960s, they saw black women
functioning in key grassroots leadership positions. This “experience
of women’s leadership,” wrote one historian of the period, “would
contribute to the gradual emergence of the feminist agenda.”28

The Women’s MovementHard
on the heels of the movement for racial equality came the women’s
movement. Women, like minorities, demanded equal treatment in the eyes
of the law and sought expanded economic and educational opportunities.
Many resented the assumption that their career options were limited to
secretarial work, teaching, and nursing and they decided to become doctors
and lawyers instead. Others demanded the opportunity to work in automobile
assembly plants and steel mills because wages were higher there than in
beauty parlors and grocery stores.29 Frequently,
however, when a woman worked in a man’s job, she was paid far less
than a man would be. This was another extremely significant point of contention
among feminists determined to change the system and with it women’s
economic status.30

Women
who volunteered to serve their country during the war in Vietnam were products
of this new philosophy. Although servicewomen’s job assignments were
distinctly limited, women and men of the same rank, be they officer or
enlisted, were paid the same. This well known “perk” drew many
ambitious, goal-oriented women into the service. These women expected challenging
assignments and wanted to be allowed to contribute to the best of their
abilities. Many women volunteered to serve in the theater of war because
that was where they believed they were needed. The military, which had
been one of the first sectors of society to officially end racial segregation,
had a harder time accommodating the expectations of servicewomen. Although
they were not legally prohibited from assigning women to Vietnam, deeply
imbedded cultural beliefs bolstered the military’s reluctance to
send women to the battle theater. Furthermore, ever since 1948, the services
had trained women for a limited number of administrative-type jobs which
were accomplished behind desks at headquarters, not in the field. As supervisors,
women officers were in most cases limited to supervising other women. Overall,
these restrictions limited the number of assignments to Vietnam available
to servicewomen and had an adverse impact on servicewomen’s morale.31

The first five enlisted women in the
Air Force (WAF) and the fourth WAF officer to be assigned to Vietnam
arrive at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, Vietnam, June 1967. The women
(left to right) are: Lt Col June H. Hilton, A1Cs Carol J. Hornick
and Rita M. Pitcock, SSgt Barbara J. Snavely and A1Cs Shirley J.
Brown and Eva M. Nordstrom. National Archives (342B-VN-143-103323)

When
the war in Vietnam started, the maximum number of women in each service
was still limited by law to 2 percent. Most military women served as nurses,
secretaries or clerks. Very few women other than nurses held supervisory
positions. It was very difficult for women who were not nurses to get an
assignment to Vietnam. Ironically, at the same time many young men resisted
the draft because they did not want to go to Vietnam, military women, both
black and white, viewed assignment to Southeast Asia as a privilege. Members
of the WAC and women in the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps pressured
their chains of command for assignments to Vietnam with little success.
One African-American Air Force lieutenant colonel who had completed a highly
classified counterintelligence course in preparation for assignment to
Vietnam saw her orders abruptly cancelled. Initially, she was uncertain
whether her rejection was based on her race or her gender. She eventually
learned that her race had nothing to do with the decision to hold her back.
It was simply that her superiors were uncomfortable with the idea of sending
a woman to Vietnam.32

Sister Soldiers
During
the Vietnam War, approximately 700 WACs served in theater and as many as 75
of them were African-American.33 One of whom was WAC CW3 Doris “Lucki” Allen.
Early in her military career, she asked for a transfer out of a dead end job
in public relations at Ft. Monmouth, NJ, and went to the Army Language School
in California because “it was the only place they would send me.” CW3Allen
had encountered a typical problem women faced in the workplace during the 1960s.
She was good at her job, so her supervisors did not want to lose her; however,
they did not want to promote her either. “Had I gone out with my boss,” she
said later, “I might have been promoted.” But because she spoke
a foreign language (Spanish) and the Army needed linguists, she was able to
devise an escape route that did not compromise her dignity. Allen left the
Army Language School with a working knowledge of French, trained in military
intelligence, and ultimately ended up in Vietnam stationed at Long Binh from
1967-70. She recalled, "As a senior intelligence analyst in Vietnam, I
was recognized for having been responsible through production of one specific
intelligence report, for saving the lives of 'at least' 101 U.S. Marines fighting
in Quang Tri Province." In an interview, she said that she initially had
difficulty getting her chain of command to take her report seriously. If she
had not been persistent and pushed her report forward, it would have been buried.34

Intelligence
(as long as it could be conducted behind a desk) appears to be one of areas
to which women were routinely assigned. This is not surprising when one
considers that the vast majority of intelligence work entails sifting methodically
through large amounts of data, where success demands patience and persistence.
Army WO Ann M. McDonough, assigned to the Military Assistance Command in
Vietnam, worked as a polygraph examiner. She wrote, “I used my polygraph
training to assist the South Vietnamese in their investigation of suspected
double agents.”35

The
Tet Offensive of 1968, a surprise attack on US forces in South Vietnam
coordinated by Vietnamese communist guerilla fighters and the North Vietnamese
Army, was one of the most dangerous time periods to be in Vietnam. Army
SSG Edith Efferson was stationed at Long Binh as a supply sergeant during
the Offensive. The ammunition depot at Long Binh, approximately 27 miles
northeast of Saigon, was a primary target of the enemy, who attacked regularly
with mortars. WACs on duty in the orderly room hit the floor frequently
during the months of January and February to avoid the shattering glass,
flying gravel, and other debris kicked up by the explosions. SSG Efferson's
calm demeanor throughout this difficult period helped the younger women
in the office deal with their own concerns. WAC Director COL Elizabeth
Hoisington later congratulated SSG Efferson, her commanding officer, and
the rest of the women at Long Binh for keeping cool heads throughout the
Offensive.36

Another
Army woman, SPC Grendel Alice Howard, arrived in Vietnam in January 1968
in the middle of the Offensive. She was assigned to 1st Logistical Command
Headquarters at Long Binh as the administrative assistant to the Non-Commissioned
Officer In Charge. One aspect of her job involved traveling to subordinate
units, interviewing soldiers, and writing stories about them for publication.
By the end of SPC Howard's extended 34-month tour, she had been promoted
to sergeant first class. She was awarded the Bronze Star with Oak Leaf
Cluster and the Army Commendation Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster for her work
in Vietnam and ended her military career as a sergeant major.37

Nurses NeededAlthough
it was difficult for many military women to gain an assignment to Vietnam,
the services almost always sent those medical personnel who volunteered
to go because they were so desperately needed. One of these volunteers
was Army nurse MAJ Monica Crossdale-Palmer. MAJ Crossdale-Palmer served
at the 85th Evacuation Hospital at Quin How during the military buildup
in Vietnam in 1965 and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal. When her
12-month assignment ended, she extended for an additional six months and
was transferred to the 17th Field Hospital in Saigon. In March 1967, MAJ
Crossdale-Palmer returned to the United States and was assigned to the
Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, DC, where she served 18 months
in the operating room before she volunteered to return to Vietnam. During
her second tour of duty, she served as operating room supervisor of the
45th Surgical Hospital at Tay Rinh, seven miles from the Cambodian border.38

Marie L. Rodgers joined the USA NC
in 1952 and retired as a colonel in 1978. In December 1967,
she received the Bronze Star for distinguished service in connection
with group operations against a hostile force in Vietnam between
October 1966 and September 1967. Women’s
Memorial Register

Another
Army nurse who volunteered to serve in Vietnam was MAJ Marie L. Rodgers,
who received the Bronze Star from President Johnson in a White House ceremony
in December 1967. MAJ Rodgers, a 15-year veteran, rendered distinguished
service in connection with group operations against a hostile force in
Vietnam from October 1966 to September 1967. She was the operating room
supervisor in the 24th Evacuation Hospital in Long Binh .39 In
her words “I got the Bronze Star because of how smooth[ly] my unit
ran.” Rodgers volunteered to go to Vietnam because she knew she was
a good operating room nurse and wanted to have the opportunity to contribute
her skills where they were most needed. She also wanted to challenge herself.
The hospital at Long Binh was very busy; operating room personnel routinely
handled all types of wounds, including head and face wounds. Rodgers noticed
little racial prejudice in Vietnam. She said, “The Army system of
promotion really helped. In other situations, as a black nurse, I wouldn’t
have gotten the kind of jobs I had. In the Army, they always had to give
you the job you trained for, and with that, the rank.” Rodgers said, “There
were not a lot of black nurses. Most times I was the only black nurse.
I never worked with a black doctor or a black surgeon. I never even had
a black nurse on my staff.” The reason for this, of course, was that
African-Americans had only just begun to break through the educational
and professional barriers that had prevented them from obtaining degrees
in medicine. As commissioned officers in the military, African-Americans
in theory competed on an equal footing with whites. The problem was obtaining
the necessary degrees to qualify for a commission. Rodgers added, “I
think I was blessed. I guess I was competent, I was always able to get
the job done.” Rodger’s career in the Army Nurse Corps spanned
25 years and she retired as a colonel.40

In
her official history of the Army Nurse Corps, COL Mary Sarnecky said that
the Nurse Corps did make deliberate attempts to recruit more minority nurses
during the Vietnam Era. When the Walter Reed Army Institute of Nursing
was established at the University of Maryland in 1965, for example, administrators
encouraged African-American enrollments but struggled with a high attrition
rate among minority students because the “less than optimal caliber
of their secondary education” had not provided them with “the
tools necessary for success in a competitive academic environment.”41 By
1972, there were no minority students at the school, so two African-American
nurses, both majors, were assigned to travel around the country interviewing
interested applicants and eventually brought 10 African-American students
to the school, seven of whom ultimately graduated.42

The
Army tried to assign CPT Elizabeth Allen to the Institute of Nursing in
1967. The Nurse Corps had very few officers with advanced degrees, and
CPT Allen had master’s degrees in psychiatric nursing and business
administration. She also had three brothers in the Navy, however, and she
knew that while there were few African-American health professionals in
Vietnam, there were a lot of front line African-American troops. She wanted
to be there for them. In an interview CPT Allen linked military service
to the fundamental obligation of citizenship when she noted, “Everybody
who claims to be an American has military obligations. I don’t believe
women should be exempt.” She had to be very persistent before she
was finally assigned to the Army hospital at Cu Chi, headquarters of the
25th Division. One of her responsibilities involved flying aboard the helicopters
used for medical evacuation. In her memoir, CPT Allen wrote that she will
never forget her first evac patient, a sucking chest wound. It was a night
flight, and the helicopter could not use lights. “The only thing
I know to do is find his face and do breathing for this kid, and I do that
all the way to Saigon. I keep him alive in the dark. We set down, they
take him off, and we’re back up again and moving.” She learned
to conduct triage, which involved deciding which patients should be treated
first, and which would have to wait because their cases were too complex.
Operating on soldiers who needed lengthy procedures would take too much
time when resources were limited and there were too many patients waiting
for surgery. “We only had three operating rooms. We took first those
that would use the least resources,” said Allen. Those that needed
long surgeries had to wait until there was a lull. Some died in the interim,
others stayed alive and were eventually operated on.

By
the time of the Tet Offensive, CPT Allen was at the 71st Evacuation Hospital
in Pleiku. She remembered that the hospital was fired on virtually every
night, and for this reason they assigned the most experienced nurses to
night duty. “There was no place to go. You had to keep doing whatever
you were doing. Responding to fear is not always an option. Men’s
lives were dependent on me, and my being scared was not useful,” she
said. After the war she received a doctorate in nursing from the University
of South Carolina and served in the Army Reserve. She is now an associate
professor of nursing at the University of Michigan.43

Like
the Army, the Air Force also sent some of its nurses to serve overseas
in support of the war in Vietnam. One of these nurses was Air Force CPT
Olivia Theriot, who was stationed at Clark AFB in the Philippines as a
flight nurse with the 902nd Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron during the
Tet Offensive. She made daily trips in and out of Saigon aboard C-118s
and C-130s, moving the wounded between Vietnam, the Philippines, Okinawa
and Thailand. Most times the flight in carried supplies and the flight
out carried patients. During the height of the Offensive, her unit flew
in and out several times a day. She recalled many amputees, tracheotomies,
and hemorrhages and noted, “I was one of a few blessed flight nurses
that never had an in-flight death.” On one assignment, she flew into
the demilitarized zone (DMZ) to evacuate personnel from a Navy ship that
had been hit. After the war, CPT Theriot remained in the Air Force Nurse
Corps and she later retired as a lieutenant colonel.44

USA NC 1LT Diane M. Lindsay, of the
95th Evacuation Hospital, receives the Soldier’s Medal—she
had restrained a soldier who had pulled the pin from a live grenade
and thrown it. 1LT Lindsay was the first African-American woman
to be recognized with the award and the second USA nurse to earn
the medal in Vietnam. Army Nurse Corps Collection, Office of
Medical History, Office of the Surgeon General

After the Tet OffensiveAlthough
the Tet Offensive ultimately failed to push the US Armed Forces out of
Vietnam, it shocked the American public, which had, until then, believed
that the United States would win the war. In April 1969, as the war was
becoming increasingly unpopular at home, Army nurse LT Diane M. Lindsay
volunteered for assignment to Vietnam. She was on duty at the 95th Evacuation
Hospital when a confused US soldier pulled the pin from a live grenade
and threw it. LT Lindsay and a male officer restrained the soldier and
convinced him to relinquish a second grenade, thereby avoiding additional
casualties. Her bravery earned her the Soldier's Medal for heroism. She
was the first black nurse to receive the award, and was eventually promoted
to captain.45

Cora L. Burton joined the USA NC in
1956 and retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1977. From September
1969 to September 1970, she served at the 91st Evacuation Hospital
in Chu Lai, Vietnam, and for her performance in Vietnam, received
the Bronze Star. Women’s Memorial Register

In
addition to the stress of living and working in a war theater, African-American
military nurses in Vietnam frequently faced additional stresses related
to racial and sexual harassment. Army MAJ Cora L. Burton served at the
91st Evacuation Hospital at Chu Lai from September 1969 to September 1970.
A northern city, Chu Lai experienced almost daily rocket attacks during
this period. MAJ Burton served as a hospital supervisor, monitoring patient
triage and stepping in during emergencies. Initially, her chief nurse had
resisted giving her a supervisory position. She believed it was because
she was black, and complained to the hospital commander. The issue was
resolved in favor of MAJ Burton, however, this meant that she “owed
the commander a favor.” Wrote Burton, “The Colonel found ways
to let me know what he wanted from me in return for my support–my
body. I learned to duck with such grace and poise, I soon became as fleet
of foot as any prima ballerina. I didn’t want to offend or anger
him because I had been warned of his vindictiveness. Instead, I called
on all the psychology I had learned as well as my intuitiveness to stay
out of his clutches.”

The
commander repeatedly asked MAJ Burton to visit him in his trailer and even
gave her a sexually explicit book to read, saying “Why don’t
you read this and think about it, and we’ll discuss it later.” Burton
dodged his approaches. She said, “The only thing I wanted to do was
finish my tour and get the hell out of there unscathed physically and mentally
and without a vindictive blow from the commanding officer via my efficiency
[report]. In those days this type of annoyance was called hitting on you.
Now its called sexual harassment.”46

In
January 1970, MAJ Burton was given the additional responsibility of heading
up the unit’s Human Relation’s Council, established by the
command as an informal way to resolve racial tensions. She traced many
of these problems to stress and overwork, and the fear some people felt
in a combat environment. The council mediated race-based confrontations
and attempted to educate soldiers about ethnic terms and traditions. In
one notable situation, MAJ Burton was asked to talk to a panicked black
private holding two white MPs at gunpoint. MAJ Burton convinced the soldier
to surrender. She received the Bronze Star for her performance in Vietnam.
She spent her entire nursing career in the Army Nurse Corps, retiring as
a lieutenant colonel.47

Nurses
Rodgers, Allen and Burton all spoke of feeling lonely in Vietnam. Because
of the fairly small number of African-American Army nurses, most were assigned
to hospitals where they were the only black nurse. Their social lives were
further limited by the scarcity of African-American male officers during
those years. According to authors Charles Moskos and James Sibley Butler,
opportunities for black men to serve as commissioned officers in the Army
were “severely constrained” during the 1950s and 1960s.48 Because
nurses were commissioned officers and were strongly discouraged from fraternizing
with enlisted personnel, the social lives of African-American nurses were
also “severely constrained” during their time in Vietnam.

COL Clotilde Bowen, the first black
woman physician to hold a military commission, gives her farewell
speech after turning over command of Hawley Clinic, Ft. Benjamin
Harrison, IN, Sept. 11, 1978. US Army Photograph

COL
Clotilde Bowen faced an even more limited field of peers during her year
in Vietnam. Traditionally, physicians have held substantial authority,
and for years the military refused to commission women doctors. They served
on a temporary basis during WWII, but were not accepted as permanent members
of the regular Medical Corps of the Army, Navy and Air Force until the
middle of the Korean War in 1952. Very few women doctors joined the military
during the 1950s and 1960s, however. During this era, women comprised only
4 percent of physicians in the United States, and of these, only a small
number were black. The first black woman physician to hold a military commission
was COL Bowen, who joined the Army in 1955. By 1970, then COL Bowen, still
the only black woman physician in the Army, received orders “to my
surprise and dismay to go to Vietnam.”49

“We
landed in Bien Hoa after midnight July 6, 1970 in a hail of gunfire, rockets,
mortar rounds and unbearable heat,” wrote COL Bowen. Her job required
frequent travel in country, and she “always packed my .45-calibre
sidearm. I submitted reports about the morale and mental health of troops
and civilians in Vietnam, briefed congressmen, visiting foreign dignitaries
and ranking officers, and news media wanting to know what was really happening
as we were losing the war.” COL Bowen recalled her tour as being
very lonely. “My position and rank precluded me from socializing
with most officers or NCOs.”50

As
the Army’s chief psychiatrist in Vietnam, COL Bowen oversaw the work
of 17 other physician psychiatrists, as well as nurse psychiatrists and
social workers. She was also responsible for planning and coordinating
the Army’s drug and race relations programs in Vietnam. COL Bowen
told a newspaper reporter that “Army psychiatry is mostly preventative–treating
problems before they start. The main problem in Vietnam and in the service
in general is the disaffected state of American youth today. They lack
the motivation to be in the service, they certainly lack the motivation
to be in Vietnam and I think they lack the motivation to do things in civilian
life. This disaffection is the main reason for the use of drugs, for instance.”51

COL
Bowen believed that the majority of the discrimination she encountered
both inside and outside the Army Medical Corps involved not her race, but
her gender. “If America became all white overnight, the most persistent
form of discrimination–sexism–would still be there,” she
told a reporter.52 “Of
course, when you are a colonel, discrimination is much less of a problem
in the military. Even black, female colonels rate salutes in ‘this
man’s’ Army.” Although the Army relegated most enlisted
women to positions as secretaries and clerks and gave few women the opportunity
to learn jobs that required mechanical or technical skills, COL Bowen believed
that the Army had gone further than many sectors of society in giving women
equal pay for equal work. “The Army promotes you on the basis of
quality and years of service,” she said. “It doesn’t
matter whether you are male or female, you get the same pay, the same privileges.
The system is trying to be fair.” Still, she said, “Changing
laws and restructuring the system doesn’t do much to remove the main
obstacle–the male ego and the way women relate to it.”53

In
1977, COL Bowen was assigned to command the Hawley Army Medical Center
at Ft. Benjamin Harrison, IN, making her the first woman to command a US
military hospital. She summarized her philosophy to a news reporter, “I
know that there have been times when I have been victimized by discrimination–both
racial and sexual. But I have refused to allow the fact that people discriminate
against me to defeat me or sour my judgment. … Then too, I’ve
often wondered if, when it came to assigning military physicians to new
jobs, it wasn’t easier for my superiors to pick me than try to deal
with a pool of white men–all essentially … the same. I imagine
I sort of stood out, gave them something definite to point to that made
a ‘reason’ for them to pick me.”54

Ultimately,
opposition to the Vietnam War and the draft led to the establishment of
the All-Volunteer Force in 1973. A few years earlier Congress had removed
the artificial limits on the number of women who could be in each service,
and as the armed forces began accepting the best qualified of all the volunteers,
characteristics such as race and gender lost significance in comparison
to such differentials as intelligence, physical fitness and commitment.
The military rediscovered the link between equal opportunity and military
efficiency first set forth by the Fahy Committee in its plan to desegregate
the US Armed Forces in 1950. Today, the All-Volunteer Force is comprised
of a higher proportion of women and minorities than at any other time in
history and because of this the nation has gained a professional, highly
trained armed force that is second to none.

If you are a servicewoman or woman
veteran or know one who is serving or who has served in the US Armed
Forces, please contact the Foundation at history@womensmemorial.org,
so that we can continue to enrich the history of women's
service and sacrifice in defense of our nation.

1Michael
Parks, “Col.
Bowen Says Army More Uptight Over Her Sex Than Her Race,” The
Baltimore Sun, 23 March 1971, sec. B.

2Linda
Witt et al., “A
Defense Weapon Known to Be of Value” Servicewomen of the Korean
War Era, (Lebanon, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2005),
1-12.

3Charles
C. Moskos and John Sibley Butler, All That We Can Be: Black Leadership
and Racial Integration the Army Way (New York: Basic Books, 1996),
30-33.

11Michael
Beschloss, statement made on “One Nation, One Army,” A
News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Public Broadcasting System, 31 July
1998, Transcript, Historian’s
Files, Women In Military Service For America Memorial Foundation,
Arlington, Va.